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COLUMN-Any Australian iron ore inquiry won’t solve major issue – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – May 15, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

SINGAPORE, May 15 (Reuters) – Any inquiry into the collapse of iron ore prices by the Australian Senate is likely to provide a great opportunity for political point-scoring for a domestic audience, but won’t address the main issue.

It’s still not clear whether independent Senator Nick Xenophon has enough support from the major parties, the ruling Liberals and the opposition Labor, to launch an inquiry, but he did receive backing for the idea from Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

If any inquiry did go ahead, it would provide a platform for Andrew Forrest, the chief executive of No.4 iron ore producer Fortescue Metals Group, to continue his campaign against the expansions of No.2 and No.3 miners, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

Forrest would most likely relish the chance to continue to portray his company as the tough “Aussie battler” being bludgeoned by heartless multinationals that have failed to act in the interests of Australia and its people.

While this sort of attack may play well in the domestic media arena, it’s also likely that any Senate inquiry would find that BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto haven’t done anything illegal in ramping up iron ore output to levels beyond demand growth.

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Strip-mining the Ocean Floor: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? – by Miyoko Sakashita (Huffington Post – May 14, 2015)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/green/

Miyoko Sakashita is the Oceans Director, Center for Biological Diversity.

Have you heard about the disastrous gold rush brewing in our oceans? Not content with getting minerals from dry land, companies are now aiming to strip mine our ocean floors in search of nickel, copper, cobalt, gold and other valuable metals and minerals. Many of them would end up in our electronics.

But there’s a heavy price to be paid: Like mountain-top removal mining, deep-sea mining involves massive cutting machines that will leave behind barren, underwater landscapes — some of the richest and most pristine ecosystems left on the planet.

This week, the Center for Biological Diversity (where I work) took the first steps in slowing down this deep sea gold rush by filing a lawsuit challenging the permits that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued to a Lockheed Martin subsidiary to mine the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and Mexico.

While there’s much that we still don’t understand about life on the deep sea floor, we do know that the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is teeming with wildlife, including sperm whales, spinner dolphins, loggerhead sea turtles, great hammerhead sharks and a vast array of fish, corals, snails and sponges.

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Close the gap between Canada and its aboriginal people: AFN chief – by Kim MacKrael (Globe and Mail – May 14, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA — The leader of the country’s largest aboriginal group is calling on Ottawa to close the gap between Canada and its aboriginal people as the UN prepares to adopt a new set of sustainable development goals.

Perry Bellegarde said in an interview Wednesday that the federal government should invest more in education, training and housing to bring conditions for aboriginal Canadians in line with the rest of the country. The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations said he plans to bring that message Thursday to a gathering of international development experts and non-governmental organizations in Gatineau, Que.

Mr. Bellegarde’s comments come as the United Nations prepares to adopt a new set of global targets to replace eight millennium development goals when they expire at the end of this year. The new objectives will cover 17 target areas, ranging from ending poverty to combatting climate change and reducing inequality. Unlike the previous goals, the new targets have been explicitly developed to be universally applicable, which means wealthy countries like Canada will be expected to work toward achieving them alongside lower-income countries.

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Joc O’Rourke to succeed Prokopanko as Mosaic CEO – by Dee DePass (Minneapolis Star Tribune – May 14, 2015)

http://www.startribune.com/

Current CEO James Prokopanko is retiring this summer.

The Mosaic Co. has tapped James “Joc” O’Rourke to become the fertilizer giant’s new president and chief executive.

O’Rourke, 54, joined Mosaic in 2009 and since 2012 has served as executive vice president of operations and chief operating officer. He will succeed the retiring James Prokopanko as president and CEO on Aug. 5, the company announced late Wednesday.

“The board has full confidence in Joc and the rest of Mosaic’s talented management team,” said Robert Lumpkins, chairman of the company’s board. “Together, they will help Mosaic build on Jim’s legacy of success for our employees, customers, investors, communities and other stakeholders.”

Before joining Mosaic, O’Rourke was president of the Australia-Pacific region for Barrick Gold Corp. and responsible for Barrick’s 10 gold and copper mines in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

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Nigeria: 28 Kids Killed by Lead Poisoning From Gold Mining – by Michelle Faul (Associated Press – May 15, 2015)

http://abcnews.go.com/

LAGOS, Nigeria — Twenty-eight children have died from lead poisoning from illegal gold mining in a remote west-central village, Nigerian health officials said, while doctors still are treating thousands from an earlier outbreak.

Dozens more children are sick in the Rafi area of Niger state and action must be taken quickly if they are not to suffer irreversible neurological damage, Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Her organization still is treating children from a 2010 mass lead poisoning, in Zamfara state, that killed 400 kids and left many paralyzed, blind and with learning disabilities because of a three-year delay in government funding for a cleanup.

Chouinard said they have cured 2,688 of 5,451 people infected and hope to complete treatment next year. They have had most success in the worst-affected village of Bagega, where all but 189 of 1,426 people have had the lead leached from their bodies.

Junior Health Minister Fidelis Nwankwo said Thursday all those newly infected in neighboring Niger state are under 5 with 43 percent of the 65 sickened children dying.

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China is a global economic and political power. Soon, it will be a military one, too – by J.L. Granatstein (National Post – May 15, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

A few days ago, the Office of the Secretary of Defence in Washington issued its annual report on Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2015. This is a sobering document, appearing within days of a contingent of Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers marching past Russian leader Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping in Moscow’s huge Victory Day parade. At the same time, and for the first time, Chinese navy ships are engaging in live-fire exercises in the Mediterranean Sea alongside Russian warships.

The authoritative U.S. document notes that Beijing’s defence expenditures continue to increase by 9.5 per cent a year, as they have done for the past decade. The Defense report concludes that China remains focused on the possibility of conflict in the Taiwan Straits — it has 400,000 soldiers, sailors and air personnel in the area — and in the East and South China Seas, with substantial military buildups also continuing there.

The South China Sea archipelago of the Spratly Islands, claimed by Beijing, are undergoing extensive “land reclamation,” China creating what is now a 2,000 acre landmass out of what were hitherto essentially underwater shoals.

Naval vessels will soon be able to dock there, and an airstrip is all but certain to be constructed. As the South China Sea is thought be ripe for mineral and oil exploitation and as parts of it are claimed by several Asian nations, this is a dangerous flashpoint, an area where Beijing’s “low-intensity coercion” can be expected to increase. In response, the Philippines and Vietnam are doing “land reclamation” projects of their own.

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Mexico plans land reform to boost investment – sources – by Gabriel Stargardter and Dave Graham (Reuters U.S. – May 14, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

MEXICO CITY – May 14 Mexico’s government is drawing up a land reform to strengthen the rights of private companies dealing with rural landholders in a bid to lure investment and lift the economy, according to two people familiar with the plan.

The legislation being drafted will draw on an energy reform completed last year that gave the government more power to act in favor of investors in disputes with communal landholders over usage of rural areas such as those known as ejidos, said the two officials from the government and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Part of a wider agricultural reform, the sensitive issue of how to create a firmer legal footing for developers without inflaming protests from poor landholders is with the ministry of agrarian, territorial and urban development (SEDATU), the sources said on condition of anonymity.

With almost half of Mexico’s population living in poverty, a large part of them in rural areas, the rights of communal landholders, or ejidatarios, have long been protected in Mexico.

President Enrique Pena Nieto risks major opposition to the reform plan, especially from left-wing groups.

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BCSC clears short seller Jon Carnes of fraud in Silvercorp case – by Peter Koven (National Post – May 15, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Short seller Jon Carnes has been cleared of fraud allegations by a British Columbia Securities Commission panel, which found his attacks on Silvercorp Metals Inc. were not prohibited. The panel did, however, raise serious concerns with his conduct.

“While we may find Carnes’ conduct unsavory, we do not find it was clearly abusive to the capital markets,” the panel said in its decision. The panel added that it is “not our role to sanction conduct we find morally unsupportable.”

In an interview Thursday evening, Carnes said he was “relieved” by the decision. “That’s always the right word to use in a situation like this,” he said.

He added that he still believes Silvercorp is the party the BCSC should have been targeting, and he thinks the commission should be held “accountable” for its allegations against him. He also disagreed with assertions that there was anything “unsavory” about his actions.

Carnes, a hedge fund manager better known by the pseudonym “Alfred Little,” is one of many short sellers that accused Chinese companies of fraud a few years ago and helped to get them de-listed from North American exchanges.

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Canada should be the world leader in energy markets — so why isn’t it? – by Cody Battershill (National Post – May 15, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Canada is a world leader in democratic freedom, transparency, environmental protection and worker rights. So why is it not also a world leader—the supplier of choice—to energy markets all over the world, selling more oil and gas to global markets, not less?

In a number of recent third-party reports on social and economic performance, Canada ranks at or very near the top of global rankings in every category. In other words, Canada has some of the best resources– and some of the best human, social and economic policies–but it still has trouble cracking world resource markets.

These days, the real obstacles to export growth come from within Canada. The political quagmire in British Columbia surrounding LNG exports is a case in point. While we squabble inside Canada, few countries can claim Canada’s level of achievement.

Just last week, a United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network report placed Canada fifth of 158 nations based on measures such as life expectancy, per capita incomes and perceptions of corruption

Earlier in April, the Social Progress Index ranked Canada sixth of 133 countries based on 52 indicators such as crime levels, literacy and gender equality.

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Lost in the eelgrass with Canada’s LNG plans – by Peter Foster (National Post – May 15, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The oil and gas industry has been comprehensively outplayed by the environmental
movement, which has cleverly stoked and exploited concerns about accidents, along
with aboriginal resentments and legal uncertainties, to achieve its
anti-development goals. (Peter Foster – National Post)

Remember Stephen Harper’s commitment to streamline regulatory approval for resource megaprojects? I’m not sure whether the process has in fact been sped up, but regulatory approval seems increasingly irrelevant.

This week, the Lax Kw’alaams band of Northern B.C. may have dealt a severe blow to the Pacific NorthWest LNG project (PNW) — a massive $36 billion development, including related pipelines – by rejecting outright a benefits package worth more than a billion dollars to its 3,600 members over 40 years.

The Supreme Court’s decision last year in the case of B.C.’s Tsilhqot’in Nation extended the scope of aboriginal title, and stressed consultation, but claimed that it did not give native groups a veto. Not de jure, perhaps, but de facto?

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Sierra history: Nevada Comstock miners had guts, grit on their side – by Mark McLaughlin (Tahoe Daily Tribune – May 15, 2015)

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/

Tahoe historian Mark McLaughlin is a nationally published author and professional speaker.

TAHOE-TRUCKEE, Calif. — It took skill, brains, brawn and endurance to work underground in a Nevada Comstock mine day after day and survive.

Air temperatures at the deepest depths nearly 3,000 feet beneath the surface ranged from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to nearly 130 degrees due to heat emanating from volcanic rock. Contemporary geologists considered Nevada’s 19th century silver mines to be the hottest in the world.

A labyrinth of clay seams throughout the Comstock matrix sealed off the flow of geothermally heated groundwater that riddled the subterranean rock.

Much of this exceptionally hot water was under considerable pressure and would suddenly flood a mine if a clay seam was breached by a drill hole or cut by excavation.

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Sierra history: Big risk, big money came with Comstock mining – by Mark McLaughlin (Tahoe Daily Tribune – May 15, 2015)

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/

Tahoe historian Mark McLaughlin is a nationally published author and professional speaker.

TAHOE-TRUCKEE, Calif. — If you haven’t been to Virginia City, Nev., recently you’re in for a surprise, but probably not a pleasant one.

For several years now, Comstock Mining Incorporated has run a massive open pit excavation operation on the old Comstock Lode in the Virginia Range.

The resumption of large-scale mining adjacent to the Virginia City Historic District has upset residents and businesses alike. The federal government has designated the integrity of the nationally recognized landmark as “threatened.”

Nevada has had a close relationship with mining since its first days as a territory in the early 1860s and it is a major component of its economy.

Although the primary ore in the 19th century Comstock bonanza was silver, today the state produces about 80 percent of all the gold in the United States.

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Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s iron ore inquiry slammed – by Peter Ker and Tess Ingram (Sydney Morning Post – May 15, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/

A parliamentary inquiry into the iron ore industry would be entirely inappropriate and damage Australia’s international image, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel says.

Speaking after Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared his support for an inquiry into the behaviour of the struggling industry, Mr Samuel said the parliament should not be trying to intervene in a global market.

“I don’t know what parliament thinks it can do, is it going to limit the exports of BHP and Rio Tinto? I can’t imagine what role parliament has in dealing with an international market of this nature,” said Mr Samuel.

“The very reason we have independent competition authorities is to ensure politicians don’t get involved in political situations. This is an attempt to intervene in the market in a way that is entirely innappropriate.”

Mr Samuel’s comments come after ACCC chairman Rod Sims said last month it was “misguided” to think BHP and Rio were engineering the recent price fall.

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[KGHM International] Energy plan to help new Sudbury mine – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – May 15, 2015)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

A provincial government program to help new or expanding companies create jobs and cut electricity rates will help move the development of KGHM International’s Victoria Mine project forward.

Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli was in Sudbury on Thursday to announce details of the two-year-old Industrial Electricity Incentive (IEI) Program and how it will benefit the mining company.

The IEI Program captures surplus electricity capacity in Ontario and “redelivers” it to the industrial and business community in the form of significant cost discounts, helping them be more competitive, said the minister.

Sudbury can “legitimately be called the mining capital of the world,” Chiarelli told a small audience. Ensuring mining companies and industry have access to a reliable and affordable source of electricity is a priority for his government.

Existing northern miners, such as Glencore and Vale, are already benefiting from the Northern Industrial Electricity Rate Program, which is cutting about 25% of their electricity costs.

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CSIS warns of ‘extremist’ opposition to oil and gas sector – by Alex Boutilier (Toronto Star – May 15, 2015)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

An internal threat overview by CSIS warns the federal government of “extremists” that have “converged” to oppose natural resource development.

OTTAWA—Canada’s spies are warning the federal government about an “extremist” threat to natural resource development, internal documents show.

“Extremists” have united both in person and online in their opposition to Canadian natural resource projects, according to a September 2014 “threat overview” prepared by CSIS for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney.

The heavily censored document does not outline specific threats or projects, nor does it single out particular groups. But it lists the threat between sections on terrorist travellers and a growing anti-Muslim movement advocating violence in Canada.

The CSIS report, obtained under Access to Information law, mirrors strong language in a January 2014 report from the RCMP warning of an “anti-Canadian petroleum movement.”

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